Art Style
Progression of Yves Tanguy's Artistic Style (return to homepage) Tanguy's career spanned 30 years of landscape styled painting and abstract figure drawings. His work has always been classified as Surrealist, but there is a clear shift from his early work to his late work. This section will be split up by the decades. Artwork of the '20s At the beginning of Tanguy's career, he did cityscapes before joining the Surrealist camp. Shortly after, he was creating "Exquisite Corpse" drawings with other Surrealists and has started his widely recognized organic landscapes. His work from 1924-1929 can be seen as the period of most stylistic change as his organic landscapes continue to be what he paints the rest of his life. In this time period, Tanguy's landscapes had recognizable objects in them and there was a clearly defined horizon line. In 1927, Tanguy created the painting "Momma, Papa is Wounded!" which is one of his most recognized works of art and most pivotal in his career. The muted palette, mixed with a vast space of sparse objects is a steeple in his work in this decade. The titles for much of his work is taken from psychiatric case studies of combat veterans. Tanguy, being a WWI veteran himself, liked to use these studies for inspiration to help understand Breton's Sigmund Freud stylized theories that influenced Surrealist work. During this period, Tanguy would also go on to create a few large pieces on wooden screens, which he does not seem to do after this period. One example of these screens is a 1928 "Untitled" piece that is currently in the Art Institute of Chicago. The Surrealists occasionally made decorative arts and furniture but the circumstances as to why Tanguy made such screen pieces is unknown. Artwork of the '30s Like most artists of his time, Tanguy lived a Bohemian lifestyle for most of the '30s. This most likely attributed to the muted and darker color tones in his early work. As the decade progresses, a distinct horizon line starts to vanish in his work as the difference between the ground and the sky meld together furthering the dreaminess of the scenes. The recognizable objects fade away as well as Tanguy favors littering the landscape with rock formations. His 1934 painting "I Await You" exemplifies these changes from his work of the '20s. The piece is also important as it was the painting his eventual second wife, Kay Sage, saw at a show in the United States, immediately prompting her to meet the man behind the painting. This evolved style netted Tanguy a large 1938 show in London, which resulted in a major success, making Tanguy rich. His newfound fame, the new love of his life, and the move to the United States grow his work into the final stages of his career. Artwork of the '40s After moving to the United States, Tanguy spent much of his time the first couple of years taking trips to the deserts of Arizona and Nevada. Tanguy's new life with Kay Sage in America created a new source of inspiration for him. His landscapes started to look more like the deserts he loved to vacation in. He upgraded his color palette to include brighter shades of colors, making the landscapes more vibrant. The rock formations became more organic and started looking like fabrics and body parts than just rocks. A good example of this period of work is his 1942 "Indefinite Divisibility" with the smoother, organic structures and vibrant colors. During this time period of work, Tanguy had started relying on preparatory sketches of the structures he eventually would put into later paintings, eliminating the random and automatist nature of his early styles. He had been doing these drawings as far back as 1935. However, by 1942 he had been using them as references when he sat down to paint. This had enraged other Surrealists, specifically, Breton, who believed planning out the work took away one of the more important aspects that made their work Surrealist. In 1950, his work in this decade was put on display side by side with art done by schizophrenic patients in Vienna to see if the public could distinguish his work from theirs. To the delight of the Surrealist community, the public couldn't. Artwork of the '50s The last 5 years of Tanguy's life were much different than the previous 10. He suffered greatly from illness, which eventually caused his death in 1955. The artwork of these years was drastically darker when considering how vibrant his '40s work was. The most pivotal piece of this period was his last finished painting, the 1954 "Multiplication of the Arcs". It harkens greatly back to his 1920's works in that you can see a distinct horizon and the muted palette. However, there is not a single space of the ground that is not covered with a rock. Not only that, but there are no towers, no structures climbing on top of each other. Instead, the rocks are broken and scattered across the ground. Where in the '40s Tanguy's work can be seen as peaceful and happier in the open space of the landscapes than any other decade, there is a sharp contrast in his last works of art. Tanguy had explained how during these last few years of his life he was lonely despite being around so many people. While working on his work, he had spent 8-9 hours a day working alone, secluded from everyone despite his health. Tanguy's Process and Influence Many artists who have a unique art process are secretive about it to avoid others taking their ideas and potentially their patrons. Picasso would not let anyone into his studio when he was working on his earliest cubist paintings and would even keep them covered in canvas until he was ready to show them. Once he made enough money, he went so far as to rent extra studios so he could work on those paintings in private while he worked on his other art in front of models and other artists. He would only disclose his process to Braque who was developing the same techniques with him until much later in his life. Helen Frankenthaler didn't let a single person into her studio while she worked, not even her first husband was allowed to bring her food while a piece was in progress. The only evidence of her exact process comes from a single video she allowed a documentary crew to do of her making a piece she later gave to the interviewer. She never fully did explain her process in words. Tanguy, like many other Surrealists, was kind of in the middle when it came to how much he would expose his work process. He worked on his paintings in seclusion so most of the information of his process comes from things he has said or written. As far as anyone is aware before Tanguy started creating preparatory drawings of the structures found in his work, he would begin working on his paintings without anything in mind. He may have had a dream or a memory come to his mind as his "reference" but his painting style was a stream of conscious, kind of like a writing assignment in school where the teacher just tells you to write whatever comes to mind in a specific amount of time but you aren't allowed to stop writing to think about what to write or correct your grammar. He obviously had some sort of method when it came to creating the structures or even the vague and dreamy landscape these structures inhabited. However, there are no records of how he went about doing this or what painting techniques he was fond of using. Everything like that was just chalked up to the unconscious mind taking over, but what Tanguy did to make that happen is somewhat a mystery. The meanings of most of his work will most likely always be up for debate as he intentionally would be vague in describing them and his method of using psychiatric case studies to title his work only further muddies interpretation. Who has he influenced? Tanguy's legacy is a bit unknown in the broader scale of art history. Most people who see his work think they saw a Salvador Dali artwork with how similar their dreamy landscapes look. We do know that he heavily influenced artists Roberto Matta, Wolfgang Paalen, and Esteban Francés who became Surrealist painters in the '30s. Tanguy was shown frequently in the United State after he moved and is safe to believe that his work influenced the post-WWII art movements in America to some capacity. Much of abstract expressionism delves in the expression of similar ideals Surrealist artists, like Tanguy, were exploring themselves. As Tanguy was living in the United States during this time, his work was exposed to the Abstract Expressionists more easily than those who refused to leave Europe during the war. Tanguy's art philosophy was also the inspiration for the 1980 animated film "The King and the Mockingbird" by Paul Grimault.